Alone, Together

Alone, Together by Failte200 is one of the grand masterpieces of Kim Possible Fan Fiction.^[1] It is a highly-detailed and realistic (for Kim Possible) account of what it takes to develop an intimate relationship between the main character and one of her main opponents.

The story begins as many do, with Kim and Shego fighting in one of Drakken's lairs. But things soon go awry as they accidentally activate his latest device, a dimensional portal that sends them to an alternate universe where every human being on earth vanishes as soon as they arrive. Over the course of the next twenty-one years, Kim teaches herself math to find a way back home, while Shego studies medicine to keep both of them alive in this strange new world. Over time, they fall in love.

And that's just the first half.

Where the story really gets interesting is when they come back from the alternate universe to discover that only thirteen days have passed on this side. They seem completely unaffected by the experience... until each of them experiences odd little shifts in behavior, skills they didn't know before and don't remember learning, and finally flashback memories of Other World experiences. As they realize the connection to the accident, they seek each other out to compare notes, begin re-establishing a friendship, and ultimately fall in love all over again.

The story is notable for its intelligent and patient handling of the Kim/Shego pairing, taking the time to develop a believable romance between the two of them rather than going the "abandoned snow cabin" route from the get-go. It also features some very entertaining meditation on interdimensional travel that is based so heavily in real world science that it's difficult to tell where the two separate. It's sweet, funny, and absolutely heartrending in certain places, and above all it's a story that begs to be read.

It can be found at Kim Possible Slash Haven and of course, fanfiction.net.

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Tropes used in Alone, Together include:

• Above the Influence: Once in the Other World, once in the home universe:
  • The evening after Kim and Shego declare their love for each other, Kim starts undressing in front of Shego, thinking that's what she wants and expects. Shego stops her, because she knows that neither of them is ready for that yet.
  • After they get home, Kim tries to push away her memories of being Shego's lover and fears of being publicly known as a lesbian by seducing Ron. He stops her, because he knows that she's not herself and thinks of her more like a sister.
• Abusive Parents: Subverted. Shego's father molested her once, then wanted nothing to do with her. Kim hypothesizes that he might have wanted to forget it ever happened. Shego still considers what he did to be wrong, but now she regrets never trying to talk it over with him.
• All the Myriad Ways: Kim falls back on this concept as a way of distancing herself from increasingly disturbing realizations about her experiences in the Other World, telling herself that those things happened to another version of her, not her real self. This rationalization breaks down during a phone call from Shego, who clearly sounds like the friend and lover she knew in the Other World rather than the Arch Enemy she knew in this one.
• The Beard: Ron acts as Kim's beard on her insistence to prevent media backlash and give her time to figure things out.
• Berserk Button: Shego burns down an entire city in response to seeing a magazine cover that displays an oversexualized young girl on the cover. Of course, this is because her father molested her once when she was a child.
  • An empty city in the Other World, mind you.
• Bi the Way: The bartender.
• Brick Joke: The celebration of Kim's 30th birthday in the Other World provides both a significant plot driver (when Shego remembers it) and a punch line for the final scene (when Kim remembers it).
• Character Development: Loads of it. You can actually see the maturation and changes in the characters as Kim and Shego spend over 20 years in the alternate dimension.
• Closest Thing We Got: With only the two of them, Kim and Shego have to make do as best they can. The most dramatic example was when Shego has to remove Kim's inflamed appendix.
• Congruent Memory: Kim and Shego both start to remember what they went through in the alternate dimension when doing similar things in the real world.
• Determinator: The only way home is a non-functioning interdimensional portal created by a genius Mad Scientist, so Kim sits down with a pile of textbooks to learn enough physics to understand it and the skills to repair it, despite knowing the size of the task.
• Driven to Suicide: Shego tries to hang herself after Kim is lost and apparently dead in the St. Louis earthquake.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Boy, do they ever!
• Easy Amnesia: Kim and Shego sure do forget their time in the alternate dimension easy, huh? It comes back just as easy, if at a much slower rate, due to something with the moon making them remember.
• Embarrassing First Name/Embarrassing Middle Name: Shego's actual name turns out to be Kimberly Anne van Gogh. Even after Kim is her friend and lover rather than her Arch Enemy, she is reluctant to reveal that they have the same given names.
• Enemy Mine: The early stages of Kim and Shego's relationship in the Other World. Also, Drakken makes a deal with Global Justice when he figures out how to recover them but needs help to actually implement his plan.
• Fan Sequel: Another fanfic writer wrote a short story in which Kim and Shego briefly visit the real-world farmhouse corresponding to the one where they lived in the Other World.
• Freudian Excuse: After thinking about her relationship with her father in light of Kim's suggestion that he became aloof and distant from her because he was ashamed of the fondling incident and didn't want to be reminded of it, Shego concludes that it was the root cause of her bad relationship with her brothers and her decision to quit Team Go and become a villain.
• Go Mad From the Isolation: Both Kim and Shego come close to this during their first year in the Other World. Things get better after Shego has had enough of being totally alone (see Screw This, I'm Outta Here below) and returns to Kim.
• Hearing Voices: During the first year alone, Kim occasionally hears Shego's voice. When Shego actually returns, Kim initially thinks that she's now seeing things as well as hearing them.
  • The same thing happens to Shego when Kim is lost and apparently dead. She also initially thinks Kim's reappearance is a hallucination.
• Heel Face Turn: Shego, as memories of her relationship with Kim in the other world start surfacing. Also Drakken, when Shego's mention of the St. Louis earthquake in the Other World gives him an idea that ultimately leads him to prevent the earthquake from happening in the real world, which gets him the recognition for his genius that he always craved.
• Heroic BSOD: After years of unavailing efforts, Kim burns out on her studies and spends months just going through the motions to hide it from Shego. Finally, she breaks down completely under the load of frustration and guilt. Shego is completely supportive and forgiving, which enables Kim to get back on track.
• How We Got Here: The first half of the story is spent getting us to the events of the prologue.
• Innocent Innuendo: Kim sighs and murmurs in pleasure as she enjoys Shego's skill at cooking.
• Instant Expert: Averted hard. It takes Kim months of study before she even recognizes most of the symbols in Drakken's notes, and years before she starts to make any real progress toward getting back home.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Will Du, especially obvious after he and Shego spend some time together. May also count as a defrosting ice king of the non-romantic type.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: After being chased by a pack of wild dogs and finding that she couldn't throw plasma balls fast enough to keep them at bay, Shego decided that they needed to start carrying guns (despite Kim's misgivings).
• Like Brother and Sister: Kim and Ron. Kim, unable to deal with the realization that she and Shego were lovers in the Other World, tries to prove to herself that she's straight by seducing Ron. He stops her, partly because of this trope and partly because he can tell that something is wrong. Afterwards, she talks to Ron about her memories and feelings, which helps a great deal.

What was this weird power Ron had to make her feel better -- about anything? Suddenly, she saw Ron in a new light -- and understood that "Best Friends for Life" wasn't a step down from "Lovers". It was only different.

• Lunacy: For some reason (never actually explained in the story) Kim and Shego experience flashbacks of events in the Other World around the time of the full moon.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Shego gets so hot and bothered at one point that she commits statutory rape before remembering that Kim is only seventeen in this dimension rather than the adult she was in the Other World.
• Narnia Time: The passage of time in the alternate universe turns out to be completely independent of the amount of time elapsed back home -- when Kim finally starts getting a handle on the physics of interdimensional travel, she says there's no telling whether they'll arrive seconds or centuries after they left. It turns out that Kim and Shego spend twenty-one years in the Other World, and return home after a thirteen-day absence.
  • An especially literal example of "Narnia Time" in that they age to mature adulthood in the Other World and revert to their original ages upon returning.
• No Matter How Much I Beg: After the My God, What Have I Done? incident mentioned above, Shego goes to Global Justice headquarters and turns herself in, with the intent of dropping out of Kim's life while she finishes growing up.
  • Subverted in that everybody involved realizes that Shego is voluntarily remaining imprisoned and can escape anytime she chooses.
• No, You Hang Up First: When Shego calls Kim to arrange a meeting to compare notes about their experiences, they end up doing this. Ultimately, the phone conversation continues until it's time to leave for the face-to-face meeting.
• Older Than They Look: Kim and Shego lived for two decades in the Other World, and return home at the same physical age they were when they left.
• Paparazzi: Kim and Shego are caught in a passionate kiss by a horde of camera-wielding newspeople in the last chapter, revealing Kim's secret and triggering her fear of how people will react. The situation seems only one more obnoxious shouted question away from Kim melting down in public, or the assembled media melting down under a barrage of green plasma. Ron, however, manages to defuse the crisis nicely with a bit of Shaming the Mob.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: A independent movie was made of this story, though it took a Broad Strokes approach of being about two women alone in an empty world, obviously stripping out all the Kim Possible aspects. Still, that's a movie based on a work of cartoon fanfiction.
• Reset Button: Apparently played straight, then subverted. Kim and Shego return home exactly as they left, with no sign of aging or injuries from their time in the Other World. They don't even have any conscious memories of the experience... at first.
• Room Full of Crazy: Kim spends her first year in the Other World obsessively spending every waking moment studying math and physics, neglecting personal hygiene and living in a mess of scattered books, notes, and discarded food and water containers.
• Scavenger World: Kim and Shego are able to scrounge up what they need to survive and get home from the otherwise empty world. They do run into certain limitations; most notably, Shego abandons the hovercraft because she can't maintain it.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the first few days in the Other World, Shego gives up waiting for rescue, believing incorrectly that Drakken has written her off as an acceptable price for permanently getting rid of Kim, and goes off on her own for a year.
  • After getting back home, she leaves Drakken, partly because memories of the Other World are making her rethink her priorities and partly because Drakken is being uncharacteristically quiet about his plans to prove his genius by preventing, rather than causing, a disaster.
• Shown Their Work: A lot of the interdimensional stuff is a combination of real world science and carefully disguised bullshit that's difficult to tell apart. Also, the author did some serious research for the appendicitis scene, and it shows.
• Sitch Sexuality: As the two start becoming attracted to each other, they tell themselves that it's because there is no one else available. Shego clings to this notion longer; Kim starts to suspect that she was really gay all along. The difference may be that Kim is a virgin while Shego has heterosexual experience with Señor Senior Junior.
• Slave To The Food Chain: Kim is initially unwilling to acknowledge her attraction to Shego because she's afraid to face public reaction (if and when they get home) to her being a lesbian. Later, she figures out a way to get home, but can't bring herself to use it until it becomes necessary to save Shego's life after an accident. After they get home, she doesn't know how to deal with the increasingly clear memories that she and Shego were lovers in the Other World, and when all else fails tries to stay in the closet using Ron as The Beard.
• Status Quo Is God: It seems like that is how the story is going halfway through... and then you remember that the story is only halfway done, and the status quo starts to be increasingly upended.
• There's No Place Like Home: Most of the first half of the story is spent with Kim and Shego trying to get back to their own dimension. They eventually succeed.
• They Do: Kim and Shego tie the knot to each other in the alternate universe.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: One of the few Kigo stories out there that actually leaves Drakken in a better place than he had been in at the beginning. He manages to prove his genius and Kim even becomes his intern at the end.
• Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: This is the one area (other than the Kigo relationship) where this fic noticeably diverges from Canon. It treats Team Possible as informal Global Justice auxiliaries rather than as freelancers; as a result, they get sidelined when Dr. Director notices that Kim is behaving oddly. This could be considered an example of Pragmatic Adaptation, since the absence of missions allows for greater focus on Kim's personal issues.
• Walking the Earth: Shego does this for a while after giving up waiting for rescue.
  • After Kim has gleaned all she can from Drakken's notes and the local libraries, she and Shego take a long trip around the country, visiting science labs and following up leads in Drakken's correspondence.
• Wedding Day: A beautiful ceremony is held for Shego and Kim by Shego and Kim, because they're the only ones in that dimension.

1. ↑ There's quite a lot of it - over seven thousand entries on Fanfiction.net, for example - and some of the authors really know their stuff, so that's much better praise than it might sound like.